


If You Ask Nicely

by ElDiablito_SF



Series: Lightbringer Verse [5]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: A Triad is formed, Bondage, Consensual Kink, M/M, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 02:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: Thomas has a special surprise for Flint and Silver when they get back into Bristol.





	If You Ask Nicely

**Author's Note:**

> A few housekeeping notes for this installment!
> 
> First of all, if you haven't read the other fics in this series (especially "Lightbringer" and "Give Me Shelter"), there's a chance you're going to be slightly confused.
> 
> Trigger warning: Silver's past abuse will be alluded too VERY BRIEFLY.
> 
> There was reason for this exercise (LOL besides the obvious) and it was that I made some promises to Megh on Tumblr and now I'm keeping them!

**Now**

Overall, you could say they’d had an uneventful trip. Even barring the near skirmish with a customs vessel that Silver only just bullshat his way out of, while his captain’s eyes gave off a dangerous gleam he had not seen in quite some time. A gleam which, if he was being entirely on the level, made him rock hard and brain-addled.

It passed. They had gotten much better at talking their way out of scrapes rather than cutting their way right through them. Madi would never forgive him if something happened to James or the _Miranda_. And Thomas would fucking kill him.

 _Oh fuck, Thomas._ The thought of having to explain away anything even remotely resembling James captured, or hurt, or _worse_ to Thomas made Silver want to claw out his own eyes. He would have sooner thrown himself to the fishes and joined his long lost leg at the bottom of the ocean. It would only be fitting.

“You ready?”

“Huh?” Silver startled at the sound of James’ voice. 

“To come ashore?”

“Oh, oh yes. Sure.” He grabbed the packet that Madi always remembered to send to her benefactor off the writing desk in the captain’s cabin and turned to follow James home.

 _Home_. It had been - what? - less than a year since he had shown up, angry and uninvited, at Thomas Hamilton’s manor in Bristol. He had not truly thought he was even going to be allowed to stay there, until months passed, and Madi left, and there he still was. The weeks at sea followed by the weeks of awkward uncertainty on land, maneuvering around each other in a dance far more intricate than any fencing maneuver Flint had ever taught him back on Maroon Island. But Flint had never taught him to fence two men at the same time. Although he did certainly make a point about watching two different points in space, didn’t he?

_You’re still watching my eyes._

Silver smiled to himself remembering it. He had replayed those conversations in his head so often over the years that he could have recited them, the same way Homer must have at some point recited all of _The Iliad_.

“James…”

“What is it?” 

Silver had to let go of his hand, suddenly aware that they were out in the open, on the quai of Bristol. The night was dark and the quai had been empty. Silver could see his own breath in the air as he spoke.

“I just… I don’t know if I’m quite ready to head inside. You go ahead, and I’ll… join you later.”

James’ eyes watched him with simultaneous compassion and calculation that was innate only to him. “Come _home_ , John. You don’t want to upset Thomas, do you?” Silver flushed to the roots of his hair and thanked god for the cover of night. “Or… do you?”

He muttered something under his breath that he hoped sounded like righteous indignation and followed James back to the manor, clutching Madi’s package to his chest like a protective token. 

After the custom vessel had sailed on and Silver had dragged James back into the captain’s cabin, he had thrown him up onto the table and pulled up a chair (because, god damn it, it isn’t easy or gracious asking a one-legged man to kneel) and then buried his face in the coarse flame of James’ pubic hair while he swallowed his cock, his hand quickly bringing himself to completion while his captain shot a heavy load down his throat and then somehow over his hair as well. That one had surprised them both.

Would Thomas be able to smell it on him? Did Silver want him to?

He did not have to wait long to find out. Thomas had been waiting for them by the fireplace with a glass of brandy in hand and a book and cat in his lap. It was Marlowe who had politely come over to greet Silver first, while Thomas pulled James into an embrace and an open-mouthed kiss that had them both swaying dangerously close to the flames.

“Avert your eyes, Marlowe,” Silver whispered to the cat and quietly placed Madi’s package down, where Thomas might be able to find it later, once he extricated himself from the throes of whatever debauchery they were about to descend into together. James and Thomas, that was. Silver was going to sleep.

“Come, love, I have something to show you,” Thomas declared.

“No doubt,” Silver muttered under his breath, attempting to get out of their way as gracefully as his condition allowed him.

“You too, John.” Silver shivered as Thomas’ hand brushed over his back, prodding him up the stairs. “How was the voyage?” the Lord prattled as they ascended the staircase. “You were safe and careful, I trust.”

“Always,” James smirked behind his back and Silver flushed again.

“What about you?” Thomas’ dark gray eyes settled over Silver. “Have you been a good quartermaster?”

Silver swallowed his tongue. James whispered into Thomas’ ear, distracting his attention long enough for Silver to recover his ability to move again, as he maneuvered himself up the stairs and towards the master bedroom.

“ _Jeeeeeesus_ ,” Silver drawled out as he leaned against the bedroom door.

“I told you I was getting one,” Thomas preened. “Do you love it?”

“That’s a bed,” James grinned pulling Thomas in for a quick kiss.

“That’s gigantic. Enormous. Gargantuan,” Silver proclaimed. “However did you even get that in here?”

“Through the window, obviously,” Thomas shrugged.

“Oh, obviously.” Silver shot James a panicked look. “So, _all_ of Bristol knows you did this?” 

“Darling, you worry too much. These types of excesses are to be expected of a man of my rank and title. No one is going to have a look at _this_ and then have a look at _you_ and make the leap to a correct assumption.”

Silver choked on air again.

“You’re right,” James laughed, enjoying himself entirely too much. “There really was no reason to make it quite _so_ large just to fit Silver in.”

“Haha, shut up,” Silver mumbled and mentally kicked his own ass (which was, in fairness, the only way he could kick his own ass without falling) for not having a more clever retort.

“Mmmm, is that any way to speak to your captain, Mr. Quartermaster?” Thomas asked in a tuneful voice, fixing his piercing gaze upon Silver, whose treacherous blood rushed immediately to his cock.

“Thomas, my love,” James beckoned leaning closer over the bed, “are those..? Why do we now have brass rings mounted over the headboard?”

Thomas’ eyes swept over Silver’s form, lingering on his rapidly growing bulge. “Oh, don’t worry, James. I was going to let you do the honors. What with your sailing knowledge, you must be excellent at tying knots.”

***

**Then**

James had come downstairs to see if anyone capable of cooking had been awake in the servants’ quarters, or at least if there was any salvageable food from the previous night’s uneaten dinner, when he spotted the empty bottle of rum on the dining room table. That was where Silver had found him about ten minutes later, leaning against the table, and cradling his hand in his lap.

“You’re bleeding,” Silver’s raspy voice brought James out of his contemplation. The shards of broken glass came into focus on the tiles in front of the fireplace.

“I cut myself,” he muttered, looking helplessly at his bloody fingers.

“How?” Silver, barely clothed and fairly disheveled, maneuvered his way over, pushing the shards of glass away with his crutch. He picked up James’ hand with his own, cradling it in his palms as if it had been a wounded bird. “Jesus, you’ve been out of bed for a few minutes and already you’ve fucked yourself up. How do you even captain _Lightbringer_?”

“Madi,” Flint replied, giving Silver a thin-lipped smile. Silver replied with an indignant hmph. “I saw the empty bottle and I wanted to clear it, but then… I got distracted… and…” He got distracted again. Because Silver had lifted his hand up to his own lips and sucked his bleeding finger into his mouth.

How oddly perfect it was, James thought, that he had now tasted Silver’s sweat, tears, and come, while Silver had tasted his blood.

“We were both drunk last night,” James exhaled, drawing his finger out of Silver’s mouth but letting it linger against his lips. He had kissed those lips last night more times than he could count. “You might have said and done things…”

“James, please.” Silver’s hand was a sudden shackle around his wrist. “Don’t. I neither said nor did anything last night that I would not have done or said fully sober.” He certainly sounded sober at that moment, and James let his shoulders sag down with relief, another breath escaping the confines of his chest cavity where it had been sitting, waiting for Silver to speak those words. “Did you?”

“No!” James responded quickly. In the light of morning, things were no more clear than they were in the darkness of the guest room at night. Except that Silver looked strangely well rested, for a man who had barely slept a wink.

“You should bandage that up,” Silver’s fingers were wrapped around the cut in James’, attempting to stem the flow of blood. “And come back to bed.”

James reached up again, to run his unscathed hand over the ridges of Silver’s sharp cheekbones, the rough scrape of his beard and the proud jut of his chin. “You said some things last night… Some things you said were not relevant until this moment. And I’m… worried about you.”

“You should pay no heed to what I say, or you’ll never have a moment's rest.”

“Aye,” James smiled and pulled the other man closer. He reached up higher, brushing tresses of wild curls behind Silver’s ear, letting his fingers linger over the softness of his lobe in which the hoop earrings of old had been replaced with demure silver studs. “Someone hurt you,” James whispered. “A very long time ago?”

“Yes,” Silver was quick to respond in a small, unsteady voice.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” All James heard in reply was the ticking of the clock and his own heart beating inside his chest. Their foreheads touched; Silver closed his eyes. “I’m worried that… each time I’m with you, you’re going to think of…”

Silver’s mouth interrupted him by sealing over his lips and stealing his breath. Once a thief, James thought, smiling into the kiss.

“When you’re with me,” Silver spoke in that voice that was still raspy from misuse, “all I think of is that I don’t want to feel anything again, except the touch of you.”

That was enough. James didn’t want to push him, so he placed a soft kiss on Silver’s forehead and tried to rise to full height from his half-slouch against the table.

“Did I break your heart?” Silver asked in the same small voice that James distinctly remembered him using only once or twice in the past, but that had somehow seeped into him now. Such uncertainty, such pain. “Thomas said… I thought once you were reunited with him, everything else would have been forgotten.”

“Not everything,” he replied, feeling his own vocal cords go weak.

“I didn’t mean to…” It had been James’ turn to interrupt Silver with a kiss, soft and tender, yet searing like a brand.

“Let’s go back to bed,” he purred against Silver’s earlobe.

They shifted, smiling at each other in a mutual daze. The heat between their bodies was becoming familiar and comfortable, as if they had both been furnaces newly stoked. A soft rumble reached James’ ears, followed by an echoing from his own innards, and they both laughed.

“Right,” James remembered. “I knew there was a reason I left the bed in the first place.”

“There better have been.” Silver added with a chuckle, “You know, the guest room does have its own chamber pot. We don’t _really_ need to leave it for three days.”

“I’ll have the food brought upstairs, then, shall I?”

***  
**Now**

Silver pulled against the restraints and looked straight into James’ darkened eyes as he hovered just above him, completely out of reach.

“All right?” 

James’ hand smoothed down Silver’s neck, lingering over his clavicles.

“Aye aye, Captain.”

James chuckled and placed a soft kiss upon Silver’s brow. “Thomas, you sly dog, you procured the ropes and everything,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “One would think that you spent more time thinking about John than you did about me while we were away.”

“And one would be an absolute heretic!” Thomas proclaimed with verve as he leaned over Silver in his own turn and tested the knots against his wrists. “Try to free yourself,” he commanded softly. Silver pulled on the restraints again and laughed. His captain knew how to tie a proper knot. “Good.”

“This is not, in fact, very reassuring,” Silver admitted, licking his lips. His clothes had been removed and the air in the room enveloped him like a cooling mist.

“Trust that if you’re going to be a good boy, you will get your reward,” Thomas promised, running his hand through Silver’s curls. “Are you going to be a good boy, John?”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

“He’s very poorly trained,” Thomas lamented.

“Yes, my Lord?” Silver attempted again.

“That’s much better,” James gave Silver an encouraging grin. “Although isn’t it a bit late in the night to play these games?” he frowned at Thomas.

“I took a nap in anticipation.”

“Well, _I_ didn’t.”

“Well, you’re a few years younger than me.”

“This is torture,” Silver groaned, interrupting their bickering.

“That’s the idea,” Thomas replied, giving Silver’s face a light slap, not sharp enough to sting, but sudden enough to demand his attention. Silver’s nipples hardened instantly.

Thomas slithered across Silver’s body, to the other side of the bed where James was still seated, smirking and fully clothed. He draped himself languidly over James’ back, mouthing at the nape of his neck, nuzzling against the cut of his jaw. Silver swallowed around a sudden onslaught of thirst, unable to take his eyes off the two of them as James’ own eyes closed and his head rolled back against Thomas’ shoulder, exposing the thick lines of his neck. Silver wished he could have been kissing that neck right _now_ and he emitted a soft whine, pulling against the ropes that held him in place.

“Tell me, John Silver,” Thomas purred softly, “tell me the truth. How is my heir?”

“Wh--what???”

“Madi. How is she?”

“She’s… Regal,” Silver attempted. “Uncompromising. Unflinching. Says she’ll come back to Bristol with us after the next supply run, in time for Christmas.”

“Very good,” Thomas grinned over James’ shoulder. “You get a treat.” 

He pulled at the hem of James’ loose shirt and tugged it up and over his head, exposing the hard planes underneath to Silver’s hungry gaze. Thomas’ fingers caressed the expanse of James’ chest, combing through the soft, ginger patches of hair there. Silver wished he could bury his entire face in the valley between James’ pecs.

“Now,” Thomas continued, “tell me, did everything go smoothly on your run?”

Silver looked helplessly towards his captain, who watched him through heavily lidded and hazy eyes. “Yes, my Lord.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not going to get a treat if you don’t tell me the truth.”

“Everything went well, my Lord, I swear,” Silver panted out, shifting against the feel of the satin sheets beneath his back. Thomas’ fingers skated over James’ arms and curled under his armpits. Silver’s cock twitched against his abdomen, suddenly fully erect and demanding attention. “Please,” he begged softly, not sure what exactly he needed from the two men on the bed next to him.

“You’re still lying, but you’re doing it for James,” Thomas pronounced, digging his chin into the muscles of James’ shoulder. “Hm… Should I punish James instead of you?”

“ _Fuck_...,” was all Silver managed to say, shutting his eyes.

“Look at me, John.”

Silver peeled his eyelids open, fixing them instead on James’ flushed face. The flush was spreading throughout his entire body, lighting it in a crimson glow in the candlelight. James swayed with his eyes closed into Thomas’ arms and turned his neck so they could press their mouths together, their tongues licking languidly past each other’s lips, slowly and on full display for Silver’s benefit.

“We have to work on building our trust, John, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re pretty fucking demented, if you’d like to know what I think.”

“Why’s that?” Thomas asked, casually pushing James forward, onto his hands and knees and beginning to work on pulling his breeches down his thighs.

“Because you get off on having power over me.”

“Do I?” James’ breeches fell to the floor, followed by Thomas’ own. The infuriating bastard left his shirt on. “Have you actually ever seen me get off on having power over you?”

“...No,” Silver admitted, ruefully.

“But it does work the other way around, doesn’t it?” Thomas continued, one hand idly stroking up and down James’ exposed back and the tantalizing curve of his hips. Silver had begun to memorize the freckle patterns along those hips. He pictured them with his eyes closed each night as he drifted off to sleep. “ _You_ certainly get off on it.” Thomas’ eyes fixedly pointed towards Silver’s engorged and flushed cock, which lay bereft of touch against his abdomen.

“You both talk too much,” James grumbled.

“You want me to watch while you fuck him?” Silver asked, no longer sure if he enjoyed playing this particular game.

“You’re free to close your eyes,” Thomas replied with a wicked grin. “But you might as well keep them open. You might learn a thing or two.”

“About what?” Silver ground through his clenched teeth. The ropes against his wrists were merciless, and so were the two bastards in that huge bed with him.

“Yourself, mostly.”

Silver remembered that same vial of oil. It gave off a familiar aroma into the air when it hit James’ skin with a soft hiss, as if scalded by the touch of him. Or perhaps it had been Silver himself who had hissed. He wanted to _touch_ and to be touched. He had never dared touch James in that way, not the way Thomas was touching him. He had no idea if it would be permitted, or welcome, or survivable. Judging by the look of pure ecstasy on James’ face as Thomas breached and slowly entered him, Silver had to presume that it could not possibly be the latter. He would be immolated on the spot were he ever to touch James that way.

“Please,” he whispered again, desperate to feel something other than the cold air of the bedroom against his skin. 

James’ hand twitched, reaching out towards him, only to have Thomas slap it away.

“Please what?” Thomas asked, hips slamming against James, filling the room with the filthy sounds of flesh slapping against flesh, each sound magnified by Silver’s need to feel hands on him.

“Please… I need…” Silver’s tongue lay too heavily inside his mouth.

“What do you need, John?”

“I need…” He had no words for what he needed. It was so simple, yet so complicated. “James,” he pleaded, his voice more hoarse and needy than it’s been in some time. “James,” he begged again. “Please _fuck_... please!”

His captain’s back bowed in a beautiful arch and then he pushed himself up onto his knees, his eyes meeting Silver’s at last while Thomas continued to thrust into him. He was beautiful like that, sublime, and it made Silver’s mouth water and his cock leak and his arsehole quiver right where he lay. He whined again, pulling against his restraints in earnest.

“Please, my Lord, _fuck_! Let me touch him!”

“Mmm,” Thomas purred against James’ ear, trailing his tongue over the velvety skin of the shell. “He begs so nicely, my love, and he even says ‘please’, like a civilized man and not a barbaric wildling from a sea shanty.” James’ gaze traveled to Silver’s cock and he licked his lips. “Go on, then, give him what he’s begging for.”

He pulled out and James groaned at the loss, pitching forward again until he hovered just out of Silver’s reach. He took a bracing breath, and then crawled over towards Silver, like a panther stalking its prey, his emerald eyes dark with hunger and lips bitten red with desire. Silver felt faint. His entire body arched off the bed propelled by his one remaining foot, and James wrapped his lips around his leaking cock, making him scream out and see a smattering of stars in the constellation of the freckles along James’ right shoulder.

James gave his cock a few wet licks, sucking it into his mouth once, twice, then letting him go with a loud pop, making Silver whine and buck up, seeking his touch with growing desperation. James chuckled softly, his breath hitting the sensitized skin, then lowering his face again but only to tease at the velvety flesh with the coarse hairs of his beard.

“Jesus… fuck!” Silver exclaimed, tears threatening to burst from the corners of his eyes.

“Do you think he’s been a good boy, Thomas?” James asked, right into the underside of Silver’s throbbing cock.

“He certainly looks like a good boy.” The vial rolled across the sheets and James’ fingers wrapped around it. Somewhere inside Silver’s agonized brain a choir of angels sang.

James crawled in between his legs, lifting his thighs up easily and placing them over his own as he spread the oil over his fingers and prepared Silver to receive him. The room no longer seemed cold. James’ teeth pulled on Silver’s nipple, chewing on it gently as his fingers probed and stretched.

“Yes… fucking finally,” Silver exhaled, attempting to spread this legs wider and to somehow entice James closer. His arms were beginning to go numb tied to the brass rings. “I need you,” he begged again, heedless of anything but the feel of hot skin against his own.

“I know, sweetheart,” James whispered, at last positioning himself at Silver’s entrance, and beginning the agonizingly slow slide into the core of him.

“Don’t come yet,” Thomas’ voice was almost as effective as a slap against Silver’s face. He bit down against his own lip and focused his blurry gaze on Thomas’ mouth, which curved into a benevolent smile. “It is impolite to come before your elders and betters.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Hamilton!” Silver could not help himself.

“Don’t let him come, James.” A hand, like a vise, wrapped around the base of Silver’s cock, making him curse both his tormentors to high heaven.

The next moment, James was tipped over him, and their lips almost touched. Silver attempted to reach James’ mouth with his own, only to be met with a wolfish grin. “You’re a real bastard,” he whispered against his lover’s beard. A powerful thrust that almost bent him in half was the only reply, and then James’ eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body trembled from unseen strain. Silver moved his one good leg over the back of James’ calf and felt Thomas.

Briefly, James hovered there, trapped between two opposing pleasures, but then Thomas thrust forward again, pushing James’ cock somehow yet deeper into Silver, fucking one communal gasp out of all three of them.

In the moment, Silver had been thankful for the restraints for had his hands been free he would not have been held accountable for what he might do, whom he might grab and press closer. The intoxicating heft of James’ body pressed down on him with the additional weight of Thomas’ hips, pistoning rhythmically in and out of him, and Silver wanted nothing more than to watch this man, the man he loved with what was left of his soul, come apart, trapped between the heat of their bodies.

The pleasure built in the base of his spine, spiking through his limbs with each thrust. He tasted James’ sweat against his dry lips. The room was suffused with the smells and sounds of sex as their bodies ground against each other, over and over again. 

He did not hear what it was that Thomas whispered into James’ ear, but the next moment, his captain was pressed close against him, his hands tangled up in the tresses of Silver’s hair, pulling on it, whispering words that had the power to destroy and remake him.

“Are you going to come for me, sweetheart?” Silver keened helplessly in reply. “You gonna come for me like a good boy?” James’ voice was part-growl, part-purr against his earlobe, scalding his skin with his breath. “Come for me, love.”

Silver had nothing but the friction between their bellies and the knowledge that James, sweat-soaked and trembling James, had emptied himself inside him already. The only thing left for Silver to do was to come, screaming his name. 

***

James’ body temperature usually ran hot, or so his bedmates had informed him in the past. He had made quite the furnace to snuggle up against in the barracks of Oglethorpe’s plantation. He remembered waking up in the earliest hours of dawn, for no reason more than to have the pleasure of watching Thomas attempt to burrow his taller and lankier form into and around his body, to warm himself against that flesh-bound flame.

That morning, as he began to move his sluggish limbs, that inner furnace felt as if it had been stoked and left to consume the entire manor. James craned his neck upwards, towards the brass rings which still held the loose ropes of the prior night’s escapades, and smiled. The incredible amount of hair hiding John Silver beneath it moved under his nose. Silver shifted and wrapped his arms tighter around James, allowing his body to settle into the state of gentle wakefulness.

Silver’s lips alighted upon his neck, the hair shifted and revealed the sparkling blues that shone like the very waters at the Port of Nassau in the sunlight. James pushed more hair out of Silver’s face and pulled him into a lazy kiss, letting his tongue count the teeth in Silver’s mouth, while their heartbeats sped up and evened out into a soft, rhythmic lull.

The bed really was absurdly enormous, and James had to nearly straighten his arm behind him before it finally hit Thomas’ back. James wrapped his fingers around the thin material of Thomas’ shirt and tugged.

“Let me rest, insatiable fiend,” Thomas mumbled, still half-asleep, and James swallowed Silver’s laughter as it tickled the back of his throat. “This is why I let you keep a puppy,” Thomas added, rolling over and gluing himself against James’ back, his eyes still closed, but mouth pressed into the freckle-spattered vertebrae between James’ shoulderblades.

“He’s much more kitten than puppy,” James disagreed, continuing to kiss Silver’s inviting lips.

“You’re both awful, horrible men,” Silver grumbled, wrinkling his nose in a way that was almost too unbearably adorable. James kissed him there too. “You deserve each other.”

“Mmm, that we do,” James concurred, moving on to kiss the curve and lobe of Silver’s ears, then the sinews of his long neck. “Come here, kitten.” He rolled onto his back, pulling Silver over one side and pressing him to his chest with one arm. The other arm somehow got swallowed up by Thomas’ body, his shoulder ended up pillowing Thomas’ head.

This was the only proper way to wake up, James decided, surrendering to the weight of their bodies over his.

“You’re beautiful,” Silver whispered, his eyes drifting from James’ face over to the top of Thomas’ blond head. Where at the temples he had begun to gray, it merely made his hair look darker. Despite their disparity in years, Silver’s hair too had begun to gray at the temples, in a much more visible way owing to the darkness of his wild curls. It made James choked up, fortunate to be allowed to see this after all the years apart: this new, aging version of John Silver.

“And you’re mine,” James whispered back, pulling Silver closer so he could lick back into his mouth. “Aren’t you, kitten?”

Silver merely moaned his ascent into the kiss, moving softly, mindful not to traverse into the other half of James’ body currently occupied by Thomas. The implicit respect and care of his movements only made James want to kiss him harder, to kiss him until Silver too could know no shame.

Thomas stirred against the other side of his neck and James turned his head to suck his lower lip into his mouth. In Thomas’ kiss was the promise of love and comfort and home. He had taught James things about himself at a time that he had been almost too afraid to learn. He had summoned James like Lazarus from the grave of his own making and had given him a precious gift of self-knowledge, and for that alone James would have loved him always.

He turned his head again, tasting Silver’s lips while his own still bore the traces of Thomas’ kiss, wanting to impart that knowledge to his other lover because he could think of nothing more valuable that he could share but _this_. John had never known this, neither love nor comfort nor home, he suspected. Not until they met and Captain Flint became part of Long John Silver’s tragic back story.

James pressed his back deeper into the mattress, wrapping his arms around both his men, attempting with futile fervor to kiss them both at the same time. They hovered above him like two Renaissance angels, smiling and bringing their lips by turn to collide with his, closer and closer, until their lips hung like ripe fruit above his, not quite touching, not quite out of reach.

Their eyes lifted and met across the expanse of his chest but neither of them spoke a word, only looked back at James with knowing and self-satisfied gazes. James was suddenly very well aware of the fact that he had become almost painfully hard, and no one had come even close to touching his cock yet.

He wanted to speak, but his mind and tongue refused to cooperate and all he could do was emit a soft sigh of contentment. It was then that Silver, that clever boy, shifted ever so slightly over and brushed his lips across Thomas’ in a soft, chaste kiss. As if propelled by a string that had been winding him up, Thomas pushed forward, pulling Silver into a kiss that was ferocious and desperate. It was the kiss of a man who had been holding back for a very long time and the sudden apprehension of it made James groan with unexpected desire.

 _I did that_ , James managed to think through a maelstrom of emotions that came over him like a tidal wave.

Silver had also surged forward, one hand clasped in Thomas’ short, feathery hair, as he allowed the other man to plunder his mouth with his tongue. Thomas too let his hand caress the side of Silver’s face as they continued to kiss, caress his neck and the soft lobes of his ears, and James was so happy for them - that they could each finally know what he had known, and revel in it together. He wanted to press them together like this and keep them this way forever, two people he loved most in the world, locked in an embrace where his eyes could rest upon them and finally find true peace.

But then someone’s hand… _hands_... deftly reached for his engorged cock and James found himself spilling all over himself and both their fists with the vigor and volume of a much younger man.

When he opened his eyes, he was still on his back, two Renaissance angels still leaning across his chest, each one stroking a hand down the side of his face.

“Good morning, my love,” Thomas said.

James managed only one stupid smile in return, but he suspected it was more than enough, for the time being.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all of you who have commented on this series and/or have come to talk to me on Tumblr: I love you guys, you're wonderful! Someone asked if this will be the last installment: chances are probably not! I'm very likely coming back here once I've fulfilled some of my other duties ;)
> 
> Comments give me life or come talk to me on [Tumblr](jadedbirch.tumblr.com) where I am forever crying over stupid pirates and Queens and Lords who love them.


End file.
